I've just had a pop-up on my PC with the McAfee logo, informing me that my subscription has expired and inviting me to click to renew. I only renewed it in March so I logged on to the McAfee site using my own link and sure enough it confirmed my subscription has 257 days to run. Has my computer been hacked?

__________________John

"A hundredth of a second here, a hundredth of a second there — even if you put them end to end, they still only add up to one, two, perhaps three seconds, snatched from eternity." ~ Robert Doisneau

I've just had a pop-up on my PC with the McAfee logo, informing me that my subscription has expired and inviting me to click to renew. I only renewed it in March so I logged on to the McAfee site using my own link and sure enough it confirmed my subscription has 257 days to run. Has my computer been hacked?

Not necessarily hacked, but there are plenty of scammers who purport to represent legitimate organisations who use such tactics to ask for your card details, etc.

I certainly wouldn't be paying anything given that you have a current subscription.

If you go to the Kaspersky website you can download a free scanner to run on your system just in case McAfee has missed anything. I believe Sophos has a similar utility.

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Naughty Nigel

Difficult is worth doing

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I've just had a pop-up on my PC with the McAfee logo, informing me that my subscription has expired and inviting me to click to renew. I only renewed it in March so I logged on to the McAfee site using my own link and sure enough it confirmed my subscription has 257 days to run. Has my computer been hacked?

So long as you didn’t click the link ( you didn’t did you?) then you should be fine. For peace of mind maybe download a couple of the free scanners and double check, I think you’ll be OK ( with the ‘didn’t click’ proviso) though.

So long as you didn’t click the link ( you didn’t did you?) then you should be fine. For peace of mind maybe download a couple of the free scanners and double check, I think you’ll be OK ( with the ‘didn’t click’ proviso) though.

No, I didn't click the link. I closed the browser, opened a new one and used a saved link in my favourites to get on the genuine McAfee site.

__________________John

"A hundredth of a second here, a hundredth of a second there — even if you put them end to end, they still only add up to one, two, perhaps three seconds, snatched from eternity." ~ Robert Doisneau

Well caught John you did a lot better than I did a few months ago. It was a similar scam but for the TV license renewal in an email. It looked really genuine and the email sender looked fine so I clicked on it. Still looked fine with all the TV license website details and pages looking really perfect the only time I noticed a problem was when I hit the final button and it went to a really doggy site address. In horror I shut everything down immediately and swore a lot. Quickly contacted the bank who were brilliant and checked my account and then locked it down. Resending me cards and pins etc. Luckily no problems were spotted as I had reacted quickly but due to the issue they were very cautious in resetting up my account and monitored it for about a week before getting my on line banking running again. A bit of a pain but certainly a relief. I scanned my pc with everything I could think of and it too was fine so OK in the end but definitely a lesson learned. I thought I was fairly IT savvy but this scam was very well put together.

Thanks guys, I think I will do a full scan with McAfee, then Scan again with Kaspersky and see if anything is identified.

Why not simply do as the link MikeOxon kindly provided suggests ? MalwareBytes has identified the malware ( “Your McAfee Subscription Has Expired” ) and gives full instructions how to remove it.

MalwareBytes Free has identified several similar scams on my systems and immediately quarantined the malicious files. As it is a free download its well worth downloading the software even if it's never needed.

Obviously in the case quoted, McAfee and and Kapersky failed to spot the malware before it loaded and popped up.

Why not simply do as the link MikeOxon kindly provided suggests ? MalwareBytes has identified the malware ( “Your McAfee Subscription Has Expired” ) and gives full instructions how to remove it.

MalwareBytes Free has identified several similar scams on my systems and immediately quarantined the malicious files. As it is a free download its well worth downloading the software even if it's never needed.

Obviously in the case quoted, McAfee and and Kapersky failed to spot the malware before it loaded and popped up.

Jax

For some reason I was a little nervous about this and decided to try the easy options first. However, you are quite right and I put aside plenty of time today to download both Malwarebytes and Hitman. As it happened, it went without a hitch and took less time than I expected.

__________________John

"A hundredth of a second here, a hundredth of a second there — even if you put them end to end, they still only add up to one, two, perhaps three seconds, snatched from eternity." ~ Robert Doisneau

Thank you very much, Mike, I followed your link today and downloaded both Malwarebytes and Hitman, scanning my computer with each. I don't know for sure whether it has worked or not yet, but Malwarebytes found 9 threats that McAfee had missed and Hitman found one more. I couldn't find anything specific to the false McAfee pop up and it had not been downloaded as a program, but I am encouraged that the new software has identified potential problems that my existing protection had missed. When my McAfee subscription falls due, I am wondering whether to cancel it and pay for the full Malwarebytes instead. I am also considering changing from Microsoft Edge to an alternative browser.

Thank you once again.

__________________John

"A hundredth of a second here, a hundredth of a second there — even if you put them end to end, they still only add up to one, two, perhaps three seconds, snatched from eternity." ~ Robert Doisneau

Thank you very much, Mike, I followed your link today and downloaded both Malwarebytes and Hitman, scanning my computer with each. I don't know for sure whether it has worked or not yet, but Malwarebytes found 9 threats that McAfee had missed and Hitman found one more. I couldn't find anything specific to the false McAfee pop up and it had not been downloaded as a program, but I am encouraged that the new software has identified potential problems that my existing protection had missed. When my McAfee subscription falls due, I am wondering whether to cancel it and pay for the full Malwarebytes instead. I am also considering changing from Microsoft Edge to an alternative browser.

Thank you once again.

I personally like MS Edge and would be reluctant to swap it for Chrome or another browser. Edge is fast, has a much better spell-checker than Chrome and I believe is as secure as possible without the snooping that undoubtedly goes on with Chrome. I just wish Edge could be installed on Windows 8.1 machines.

Antivirus is a personal thing, but I wouldn't use McAfee or Norton as in my experience they slow down machines unnecessarily and like to nag you about what they are doing so you feel your money is well spent, but still let all sorts of nasties in. When I switched to Kaspersky a few years ago I was horrified by the sheer number of infected files that Norton had been ignoring for years, and yet it regularly slowed the machine to a crawl whilst scanning.

Please also note that the free downloads suggested for virus scanning are just that. They don't scan for malware or adware; that functionality comes with the full security package and I find works very well.

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Naughty Nigel

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